Astronomical Observatory: Cool Images

M37, Jason Bremer and Josh Holwerda

M37 is a open cluster which
are usually held together by mutual gravitational attraction. They are
believed to originate from large cosmic gas and dust clouds in the Milky
Way, and to continue to orbit the galaxy through the disk. M37 is one
of three galactic star clusters in the Constellation Auriga. M37 is also
the richest of the three, containing about 150 stars brighter than mag
12.5, and perhaps a total of over 500 stars. Also, at least the majority
of these stars are in fact red giants and that the hottest main sequence
star is of spectral type B9V. It is estimated that M37 is over 200-300
million years old and has a distance of 4,600 light years.

Because M37 is a open cluster
this means that there are hundreds of stars within its parameters. This
then means that various types of stars are orbiting within the gravitational
attraction. Within this photo we can see a numerous amounts of red giants.
The picture was taken on November 30, 2004 at Calvin's robotic telescope
in the New Mexico. For this image we combined multiple filter images.
We adjusted for brightness and color. After this was completed, we aligned
and then combined our filter images into one completed image. The completed
image was then cropped and resized into the picture you see above.